1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to computer managed communication networks and, particularly, to the detection of a Universal Resource Location (URL) entry and concurrent presentation of multiple possible domain names with separate ending types, wherein each of the multiple possible domain names includes at least a portion of the URL entry.
2. Description of the Related Art
Within a computer managed communication network, such as the Internet, each computer system accessible via the network is typically identified by an address. In the example of the Internet, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) controls the distribution of packets of information between computer systems, where each packet is directed from a system at one network address to a system at another network address. An IP address, identifying a location of system within a network, may take the form of a numerical address, such as 165.55.128.60.
More user friendly networks, such as the Internet, may implement an address translation system, such as the Domain Name System (DNS), so that users may request access to other systems through a name based address rather than a numerical IP address. The DNS can be implemented through DNS servers that store database tables of the domain name corresponding to an IP address. A user seeking to access a web page located at a particular server need only enter the domain name, such as “www.abc.com” rather than the IP address of the server location, and the DNS server translates the domain name into the associated IP address.
Domain names in the Internet based network are hierarchically configured. For example, in the domain name “www.ibm.com”, “.com” is the ending which identifies the type of domain. If one DNS server cannot locate a particular domain name, that DNS server will send the domain name entry to a DNS server with a database of domain names ending with “.com” or search for other DNS servers that are able to translate the domain name. While a DNS server can search other DNS servers for a domain name entry, currently the user must still enter a valid and complete domain name if a DNS server is to locate an IP address for the domain name. A web browser, through which a user may enter domain name access requests, views a domain name entry as a Universal Resource Locator (URL) which also identifies the type of protocol used, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and directs the domain name access request to a DNS server that services domain names of the particular protocol type.
Initially, when the Internet started becoming more accessible to the public, few domain name types or endings were available. Today, one of the common expectations of the Internet is that most important web sites end with “.com” or “.edu”, even though the number of domain name endings has been expanded to include endings such as “.net”, “.org”, “.tv”, and others. With so many different endings available, if a user only knows a portion of a domain name but not the specific ending type, the user may end up looking up page after page with each ending that the user knows in an attempt to locate a particular web page with information expected by the user. Thus, one limitation of the DNS and other addresses translations systems is that the user must know and enter a full domain name, including correct ending, to access a desired web page. Further, a limitation of web browsers and other web access software is that a user can only attempt to access one domain name at a time in a single web browser window.